This is the 4th year of using the HIM low volume build plan for me and it has always confused me why the progression for the first 4 weeks has TSS going from 211→258→270→294. The 4th week is a “recovery” week and does have less intense VO2 max and over/under workouts, but it also has 4 rides instead of three and a total of 65 extra minutes riding compared to week 3. The sprint, olympic and full IM low volume plans (and other types of plans as well) all have lower TSS for the recovery week.
hi there!
yeah it looks a bit off when you see it like this but not when you consider the whole structure of the plan. the TSS bump comes from the 4th ride whereas all other rides are lower in TSS than normal, so the weekly TSS can only be compared to the other weeks by taking this into account.
you actually get a pretty good recovery from monday through saturday, compared to other weeks. then, on sunday, you have the HIM-specific ride, which is after 6 days of recovery probably okay. then you have another day of recovery before you hit the next week again. so all in all an ok load?
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I will see how things go this week. I think I would call the Saturday ride this week more moderate than easy at 75 tp 90% and the same for the Sunday ride. Last week my legs were too dead from the rides earlier in the week and I ended up moving my Saturday sweet spot ride to Sunday and foregoing my long run for the week. Overall I’m able to keep up with the plan but I have been reducing the intensity of the VO2 max rides this season. In the past, these rides would really bury me. By reducing lowering the intensity of the intervals from 120 (or 130!)% to 110 to 114%, they are still tough and require some back-pedaling to complete the intervals, but I’m not as wiped out in the past. More importantly, I’m having fewer joint issues thus far this season.
Hey there!
I just chatted with Chad and it looks like this was a mistake. He intends to go in and resolve the issue tomorrow, but in the meantime,
Sunday should be a 45-minute Easy/RPE 6 run or a Sprint Tri. If the Sprint is planned, Saturday is just an easy hour (Lazy Mountain) instead of Glassy.
So sorry for the mixup, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention @nickster 
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Wow. Quite a difference. Thanks for looking into this.
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Of course! And again, we’re so sorry for the mistake on our end.
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